Rumor Has It
by electroniccollectiondonut
Summary: In bars across the country, Hunters gather. As the night darkens and the whiskey flows, they tell of the brothers whose name strikes fear into all who hear it.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural. Never have, never w** ill.

Chapter One: Hunter's Sons

The first time the world met the Winchesters was the winter of 1985. They were tiny little things, curled up asleep behind the bar at Harvelle's Roadhouse, and Bill and Ellen spent all night answering questions of "Whose are they?" and "Where did they come from?"

"They're John Winchester's boys," they would say, "We're watchin' 'em."

John Winchester was reclusive. Occasionally someone would see him leaving Bobby Singer's or the Roadhouse with a stack of notes and a case of beer, but other than that he worked alone. He knew how to shut up and do his job though, so no one really bothered him.

By the next morning, word of the Winchester children had spread, but a week later Hunters had forgotten all about them thanks to Jake Thompson's tale of an exorcism that had very nearly gone wrong.

Over the years, Winchester trained up his boys, but the little family never hunted anything worse than a wendigo or a poltergeist. They weren't heard from often, and even less after Ellen Harvelle held a gun to John's head when she found out her husband had been used as bait.

Until summer of 2001. The younger brother ran off to college. The elder sat at the bar in the Roadhouse and drank himself stupid. John Winchester dropped off the face of the earth and rumors flew. Some said that he had run off to a secret family, others said Bobby Singer had shot him, and others still said that he had made a deal with a demon for his youngest to have a normal life.

And for four years, the Hunting world forgot about the Winchesters. When they resurfaced, it didn't take long to realize how stupid that was.

 **A/N: Jake Thompson is only going to be mentioned in this chapter. You'll never see him again.**


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two: Realizations

When the Winchester brothers resurfaced, it was because a demon had set the younger's world aflame and made him watch it burn. The Hunting world ignored them for the first three weeks of their return. As far as anyone was concerned, they were just little boys following in their father's footsteps. Then word spread that they had found and exorcised a demon in less than an hour and still managed to keep it secret from a plane full of civilians.

After that, Hunters kept the name Winchester at the back of their minds. Rumors spread and the legend of the Winchesters began to take root, and no one noticed. It was barely a week after the demon that someone sat down in the Roadhouse and loudly and drunkenly proclaimed that Bloody Mary was real and the Winchesters had killed her. People only laughed and wondered if they shouldn't.

When a news station in Missouri said that the elder had been convicted of murder and killed, Ellen raised a toast because Hunters didn't kill humans.

"To Dean Winchester," she said, and one of the brothers finally had a name. "A good man and a better Hunter."

The Winchester brothers, both of them, were back to work within the month. It was the first time (and far from the last, though no one knew it yet) that a Winchester came back from the dead.

The second time was not quite two months later and not even half as public. The story told of a reaper bound who pulled Dean Winchester back from the brink of death, and no one believed it for a second. Not because it was impossible, but because it was insane. Because binding a reaper was like lighting a candle in a hay barn and telling it not to start a fire. Even so, Ellen made another toast: to a Hunter fallen, and privately wondered if she should come up with a separate toast for a Winchester fallen.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three: Magnates

The Winchesters brought even human killers to justice, Hunters said. And they believed it too, because they needed something sane to hold onto when millennia old creatures of darkness wrought destruction at the behest of a demon. Caleb's tale was ignored, because no Hunter dared believe that two young pretty boy Hunters who hadn't even been on the scene for a year had tangled with a Zoroastrian demon. And hadn't lost. They hadn't won, but they for damn sure hadn't lost, and that was a victory in and of itself.

"Daeva," Caleb insisted when he'd sobered up some. "Two of 'em."

And that didn't even bear thinking about. One Zoroastrian demon was more than enough, no matter the type, but to go up against two you had to be suicidal. Except that the Winchesters were alive and mostly well and they were out for blood from the demon bitch who'd set the things on them.

The Winchesters were ruthless. They cut down ghosts, demons, and whatever else got in their way without a second thought in order to get to their father. And then Hunters learned what they were hunting. A demon with yellow eyes, who had twice made the Winchester women burn.

They had the Colt, said some. Neither yet thirty and they were said to possess the most revered weapon in the Hunting world. And no one was surprised. Impressed, even jealous, but not surprised.

Caleb and Pastor Jim Murphy turned up dead and Hunters learned to flinch at the name Meg, even as the Winchesters stood in Bobby Singer's house and sent her ass back to Hell.

A year. When a semi slammed into the side of Dean Winchester's car, it had been a year since they came onto the Hunting scene, bright eyed and bushy tailed and not expected to survive a week. Six months since they had changed from kids at the grownups table to a force to be reckoned with. Barely a week since they had sent the demon called Meg back to where she belonged.

And for the first time in their lives, Jo and Ellen Harvelle sent up a prayer to a deity they didn't believe in.

 **A/N: And that's a wrap (for season one at least)! I'll start posting chapters for season two within the week.**


End file.
